According to policymakers in the US, EU, Russia, and NATO, trends may bend in many potential directions, ranging from the rise of technologically empowered individuals; to an aging, more crowded, urbanized, and resource-stressed planet; to a more equal, interdependent, and interconnected borderless citizenry; or to a competitive stage where once developing nation-states will increasingly co-define the contours of a no less divided globe. In the end, though, some future worlds may be freer than others. Some less just. Others possibly more peaceful, and still others more diverse. We must work toward a logic of one world to understand what will be possible, impossible, and necessary. The ethical choice for us then will be to determine what degree of our values we can achieve not only in the next fifteen years, but also, as we have in the past, for the longer future of humanity to come.

About the Author

Thong Nguyen is Fellow of the Future Worlds Project at Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and Data Lab Program Administrator at the International Peace Institute. He has previously worked at Columbia University and consulted with the US State Department. This work represents his own views. He is also the co-founder and co-programmer of www.bld3r.com, a 3D-printing community. He holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University as well as philosophy and political science degrees from the University of Texas at Austin.

Carnegie Council asked for me to teach a course on the e-book for its Ethics Fellows for the Future on www.globalethicsnetwork.org. The fellows come from all over the world, ranging from England, China, Japan, Singapore, Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, South Africa, Canada, and the US. However, anyone can freely access the course materials below. Here's the syllabus.

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